Dinosaurs, The Just World Hypothesis and Why You Can’t Let Success or Failure Ruin Your Day
In the past couple days, I’ve become completely obsessed with Vlog Brothers videos on Youtube. Those vids, if you’ve never seen them, are information-dense clips on every topic from “What the fuck is up with Syria?” to “Human Sexuality is Complex,” and for an info nerd like me that is the coolest thing ever.
A clip I saw yesterday got me thinking. There’s this thing called the “Just-Word Fallacy” in which people (wrongly) assume that good things happen to good people and bad things happen to bad people. Hence, if a person (let’s say an author) is successful, we want to believe it’s because they are “better.” If they fail, we want to believe it’s because they suck. Of course, we all know this is not true. Circumstances determine success or failure as much as skill. But this fallacy persists, causing all sorts of problems.
First off, it makes people pissed at “mediocre” writers who experience spectacular success. Professional jealousy is one of the hardest things to deal with as an author and in many ways the reason it’s so difficult is because we want to scream into our pillow, “BUT THEY AREN’T A BETTER WRITER THAN ME!”
Well…no, they’re not. Or, they may be, but that doesn’t matter. The reason for someone else’s success is multifactorial and may or may not have anything to do with how well they write. A book may sell well because it has an awesome cover or because it’s about a timely topic (like, say, 9/11 or WWII right around the time of some major anniversary.) The book may have come out with the right publisher, or a character may rub the public consciousness at the right angle and NONE OF THAT has anything to do with what the author does or doesn’t deserve.
Take another example—the author (or TV show or movie) that doesn’t get the praise and recognition it should. *cough* Firefly *cough.* That book may be technically awesome, but for any number of reasons people may not buy it.
I’ve written a number of books that were out-of-left-field enough that no amount of writing skill or marketing or great covers could convince a wide number of people to read them. Why? Well—probably because I have an extremely out-of-left-field way of looking at the world and it didn’t occur to me that other people don’t.
But an out-of-left field book CAN be mega successful. At the right moment, or in the right circumstances. But we, as authors, can’t control the weather. We can’t control tastes or trends (unless we are so mega successful we start MAKING trends, but even that is a bit like being struck by lightning.) We can’t make people want to read things they don’t want to read.
Take Native American Romance—in the 90s, there was a trend in romance in which white chicks in the American West found their inner Indian Princess by taking up with some “savage” brown man. Personally, I think this had something to do with Kevin Costner and Dances with Wolves, but whatever.
Can you imagine trying to sell that kind of historical today?
How, exactly, do you think that would go over? Would it matter if it were well-written, or engaging, or sexy? Or would editors immediately turn it down without even cracking the synopsis?
Last year, everyone was up in arms about 50 Shades of Grey. Right now it’s Dinosaur Erotica. What do these books have in common? First off, that they are popular due to incomprehensible market trends. Second, they are about women powerless in a sexual dynamic.
Now, woman as powerless in sex has ALWAYS been eroticized. It WILL always be eroticized. It’s a romance mainstay, if not the cornerstone of all romantic literature.
It ain’t rocket science. Rape is hot. But the difference between now and the 90s is that back then a prairie chick was being raped-ish by a “savage” Native American. Right now, she’s being raped by a dinosaur.
I’m here to tell you, neither seems particularly sexy in real life. But if you’re an author with a crystal ball wondering why no one wants to read your alien romance or elephant romance or predator romance or glacier romance—keep guessing! There are markers and predictions, but in the end there’s really no way to know.
Some authors hit it out of the ballpark with their first stories, but I’ve always argued that early success can be as much of a curse as it is a blessing. Why? Well, if you try something and you’re good at it right off the bat, you have no idea WHY you’re good at it. You don’t know what you’re doing right and you have no idea what you could do wrong. You’re like a person shot off a catapult thinking you can fly.
That was my entire childhood. I was one of those smarty-pants kids. In today’s parlance, I’d be “gifted.” And while I want to believe my mother and think I’m some kind of genius, it certainly doesn’t hurt that my birthday was January 21st.
Back in the 70′s, the cut-off for starting kindergarten was that you turned 5 by December 31st of that year. So my January birthday made me older than every other kid in class. Those of you who’ve read Outliers know what happens next. I was good at school, so I was praised for being smart. This made me FEEL smart, and study harder in school. I got put in advanced classes… Yadda, yadda, yadda.
Was this good for me? Sort of. I did really well in school. However, once I got into life, I found I wasn’t always going to be the smartest. In fact—sometimes I’d feel really dumb.
Real skill takes years of work, dedication and perseverance—NONE of which I learned from being able to rattle off answers on tests. Out of school, I took just as long as anyone else to develop real mastery and that was a tough pill to swallow.
Back to writing…
My current release, FROM THE ASHES, is kicking ass. It’s been out two months as of today, and currently it’s ranked around 3,400 on Amazon. That’s by far higher than anything else I’ve written. In fact, I think it’s safe to say that most days it’s been available, I’ve sold more copies of FROM THE ASHES than I did any of my other books on release day.
Why? Well, it’s certainly not because I magically transformed into a better writer.
FROM THE ASHES has a great cover, it features a firefighter, is vaguely NA, has a dog, and is with a GREAT publishing house (Samhain.) I’m here to tell you, NONE of that was accidental.
The world is not fair, but it DOES follow patterns. Writing more makes you a better author, as does working with great editors. Watching what’s popular can help you delve into uncharted parts of your psyche to be able to write more on-trend. All this is possible when you’re willing to realize neither your successes nor your failures have much at all to do with your inherent worth as a human being.
You didn’t succeed because you’re “better” and you didn’t fail because you’re “worse.” Anyone can do better if they keep striving to be better. Anyone can suddenly start sucking if they refuse to adapt.
Bottom line? Someday you may have your uber-popular dino-erotica moment, but if it happens you’ll probably stumble into it like a drunk person picking up a lottery ticket off the ground. Work hard, pay attention, then work hard some more. That’s all any of us can do, and it’s the only thing I’ve ever found that makes me feel like I’m actually getting “better.”
Cheers and Happy Reading,
Daisy
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